I opt for the direct route to Ottawa - sort of. Its only 10 hours or so from The Soo, as its affectionately called - its really a shithole - a roughneck pulp town known for its homicidal hockey team - but I've got one last drive in Ontario I haven't done yet and always wanted to - thru Haliburton and Bancroft in the hardscrabble bush country of eastern Ontario. Highway 69 from Sudbury to Parry Sound is a bad drive - the worst on the trip. Toronto bound holiday-weekenders take it as personal insult if you hang back more than a car length from the vehicle in front. It looks like their heads are going to explode as they blow by to fill up the gap. An hour later they're still only a few car lengths ahead but happily zippered to the car in front. If I lived in Toronto it would have to be downtown in a walking neighborhood.
Haliburton turns out to be a tourist town in full tilt as I pass thru.
I see my first chip wagon in Bancroft. You need to be from Ontario or Quebec
to appreciate chip wagons. My roots are in the Ottawa Valley - only an hour
or so away now. Five generations
- all living on the original homestead farms near
Kinburn. Once the Irish get some land they tend to stay put - although
a third of my parents generation left - and almost all of mine.
Chip wagons
serve up huge portions of french fries in paper boxes with massive tin salt
shakers.
My craving for chips goes back to the
Great Irish French Frie Famine of 1833 when my great-great-grandfather
John Laughlin first
came to the Ottawa Valley. Brought a fearsome looking wife
and 12 kids on a wooden ship
- lost a child
and gained another on board.
I can feel the pull of the Valley on me as
I approach it near Renfrew. The land becomes fertile again.
A 5 hour flight from Vancouver to Ottawa is too long -
a 5 day road trip is just about right.
Its good to be home.